UN asks Sec. Council for cross-border Syria aid OK

Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos said, "We were told, just in the last 24 hours, that the (Syrian) government now requires two ministers to sign off the movement of every single truck. This is going to make our job completely impossible." She said children are starving to death in Syria for want of food aid.

In the past few weeks, the humanitarian agencies have warned that their resources are running low.

About half of the $1.5 billion needed to fund Syria's humanitarian needs through June has been collected, Amos said, largely thanks to a recent $300 million pledge from Kuwait.

The U.N. special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, Zainab Bangura, said women in Syria have been "raped, tortured and humiliated."

On Wednesday she presented a report to the council that accused Syria's military and intelligence forces and an allied militia of using systematic sexual violence on women.